BHS graduate Kari Lagerloef puts community first for the sister island.

ALTAGRACIA, NICARAGUA – On any given day, Bainbridge-Ometepe Sister Islands Association office volunteer Kari Lagerloef will spend hours answering questions on the phone or discussing projects in meetings with Ometepe’s movers and shakers.

Her Spanish is steady and strong, with trilling r’s rolling off her tongue with the grace of a local.

But during her first trip to Ometepe as a high school senior, her Spanish skills were so sickly, the locals almost called the doctor.

“My Spanish was so bad,” said the 2000 graduate of Bainbridge High. “I’d keep saying the wrong things, and would try to say in Spanish that I was ‘embarrassed.’”

But the word she used was embarezado.

“Which means pregnant,” Lagerloef said. “The family I was staying with would suddenly look really concerned when I said that. And they kept getting more worried the more I said it. They were probably thinking about calling a doctor or my parents.”

Despite some early missteps and a spring break spent “lugging bricks, digging holes and bending rebar” to build a school classroom, Lagerloef said her BOSIA-sponsored trip was “a life-changing experience.”

Upon graduation, she devoted herself to learning the language and culture as an anthropology student at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

She spent a semester studying in Chile and stayed a few additional months to help establish a school art program.

“After being in Chile I knew I wasn’t as drawn to the culture as I was in Nicaragua, so I decided to return once I was done with college,” she said.

Lagerloef signed on for a volunteer stint helping to run BOSIA’s office in the Ometepe town of Altagracia. Now six months into her year-long tenure, Lagerloef has already amassed a wealth of observations and life lessons. But the transition from college to the slow pace of rural island life wasn’t easy at first.

“I came here from the university where I was running from class to class, living off coffee and doing everything really efficiently,” she said. “I thought I’d come down here and study for the GRE, research grad schools, read all these books, start all these projects on the island and all these other ambitions.”

Raring to go, Lagerloef quickly found her wheels had little traction on Ometepe.

“Everything takes forever here,” she said. “Even sending a letter. There’s no real postal service, so you have to go out, walk around town for a half hour until you find someone you know who’s going to the town you want to send the letter to. So that person then takes a bus whenever they decide to go and then walk around that other town to deliver the letter.”

She also found that Ometepe runs on “island time.” Appointments set at noon may actually begin 15 minutes to two hours late.

Eventually, Lagerloef began appreciating the island’s easy rhythm.

“I have learned infinite patience here,” she said. “They take things slowly and they care about people and are not preoccupied with getting things done. Existing is fulfilling enough.”

She’s also learned the value of working with the community to achieve common goals.

“When (the U.S.) comes into a culture, we often act as Mister Fix-it,” she said. “Even if it’s for the best or well-intentioned, it can come across as very patronizing. You are, number one, telling them there’s something wrong with them. Number two: you’re implying they can’t fix it themselves, and number three, you’re telling them that you’re the only one that can fix it.”

Lagerloef said she prefers the BOSIA system, which relies on the communities to come up with projects they’d like assistance with. Lagerloef helps Ometepe committees draft proposals and budgets that are then voted on by BOSIA members on Bainbridge.

As the latest in a long line of Bainbridge office volunteers, Lagerloef sees herself as an intermediary between the interests of Ometepe and Bainbridge.

“I can speak from the American point of view and, because I’m here, I can see the point of view on Ometepe,” she said.

One lesson she’s learned from the Ometepe perspective is that a slow and careful pace often carries her to a job well done.

“In America, we often have our heads in the clouds, trying to fix the world,” she said. “But it ends up being a lot of talk and not a lot of real action. Here, they put the community first. They don’t discuss philosophy or the state of the world. For them, the community is what’s important. They work slowly on what’s in front of them and that means they can put more energy into it and it’s not so overwhelming.”

While her ambitious list of goals has been reduced, and the ones that remain get crossed off a little more slowly than expected, Lagerloef said she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Most days are not that stressful or even that eventful,” she said. “But they’re never boring.”